


The Things You Can't Control

by miraline_tpp



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Brief Mention of Suicide, Canon Typical Mental Health Issues, Canon-Typical Alcoholism, Dark Matters, Gen, Recovery, Therapy, canon-typical being wrong when thinking about mental health, fandom typical projecting onto characters, i'll tw throughly in the notes, im projecting onto sasha, no beta we die like Hyperion mayors, recovering when your friends aren't, sasha can't keep being juno's emotional support human, sasha goes to therapy, the major character death is Ben's
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-26
Updated: 2020-04-26
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:42:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,191
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23862493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miraline_tpp/pseuds/miraline_tpp
Summary: She got better at dealing with her past. She got better at dealing with her present. But Juno didn’t.Sasha realizes she can't keep trying to make Juno get better, and she can't wait around until he does.
Relationships: Juno Steel & Sasha Wire
Comments: 4
Kudos: 13





	The Things You Can't Control

**Author's Note:**

> Hello y'all! I'm back because I need to Project. This fic is a little heavier. TW for depression, PTSD, abusive parents and partners, mention of police brutality, sibling death, xenophobia, alcoholism, drug mention, and mention of a character being worried another character will attempt suicide. Also, Sasha being frustrated because of Juno's mental illnesses and how he deals with them. If you need anything else tagged, let me know.

Sasha used to think she could save Juno. 

They had both been through a lot. Some of it, they had gone through together. But as they grew up, as they went through high school, then the academy, as Sasha found ways to be stronger…

Juno didn’t. 

She had found him too drunk to be coherent more times than she could count. In high school, she would take him back home, ignoring the worried looks her dads gave her. She knew what they thought. But she was sure that if she just treated him like he deserved to be treated for long enough, he’d finally get the hint. Get it through his thick skull that maybe a therapist could help, that maybe he shouldn’t kiss people who put him down, that maybe there was a chance he could pull himself together. 

It seemed like that chance got further away every day. 

Sasha had gone to therapy. Her dads could never afford it, but with her HCPD salary, if she was careful to save, she could make it work. She had talked about Annie, about how every day she wondered what her sister would be doing if she hadn’t been so cruel and thoughtless and irresponsible. Dr. Malik had walked her through stages of grief, how they weren’t linear, and when Sasha couldn’t sleep, could only stare at her cracked ceiling in the dark and seethe over everything that should have been, she could put a name to the feeling and remember, in some corner of her mind, that she would have to ride it out. 

She had talked about the day the store was broken into, and the frozen horror she felt as she watched the police beat her parents, the way Annie had clung to her, both of them too petrified to cry. And she talked about the things she had to do now, the way she had to force homeless people away from the places they were loitering for warmth, the way she had to grit her teeth and ignore when her superiors laughed about the Outer Rim idiot they had arrested for something so petty and harmless it made her sick. She spoke perfect Solar, had made certain that her parents’ accents didn’t slip into her mouth. 

She talked about how afraid she was that her dream had been impossible, that there was no way she could be the person to protect the masses, not in this organization. And her therapist had her make lists of the things she could control, and the things she couldn’t, and suggested that they had heard that Dark Matters was hiring, had she ever thought about moving there?

She got better at dealing with her past. She got better at dealing with her present. But Juno didn’t.

She watched as he threw himself into relationship after relationship, insisting every time that this one would be different (He made fun of Mick endlessly for saying the same thing every new job opportunity and pyramid scheme). She bit her tongue when he confided that Diamond’s ex had called him, warned him that they were dangerous. He said he was going to take it slow, to not make any big decisions yet, and she ached to tell him that staying with them was a decision. 

They were engaged now, and Sasha was so tired. She had always had trouble making new friends, always felt she was too abrasive or sarcastic, so other than a few acquaintances, Juno and Mick were the only people she really felt connected to, but those tethers were fraying. She had applied for Dark Matters, like her therapist suggested, and the interview had gone well. The woman who had interviewed her had intimidated her, with her dark suit and stern face and close-cropped hair. But she had also excited Sasha. Not in the way Lesedi at the HCPD made her cheeks warm and her chest tighten. It was more like seeing the future. The woman was polished, smart, competent, all the things Sasha had ached to be, working for maybe the one organization in the galaxy that was really dedicated to doing good. 

When she had tried to share her excitement with Juno, though, he just hummed in acknowledgment, muttered something about how that was “cool, Sasha,” and ordered another drink. She took a sip of her tea to mask her disappointment. More and more these days she was realizing how unequal their friendship had always been. For years, she had tried to be there for him, to care for him hard enough that he would start caring for himself. But he had never done the same. When Annie had died, he had come to the funeral, but it had been Benten that sat with her and consoled her, Juno too busy blaming himself. At the time, it had just been insulting that he blamed himself when it was so clearly her fault. In hindsight, it was one link of a long chain of him being self-absorbed. After Benten’s funeral, she stayed with him for days, making sure he ate, hiding his over-the-counter sleeping pills, just in case. 

She knew he had been through a lot. With his mom, and Benten, and his string of bad relationships and the drugs he had found to numb the pain. But so had Sasha, and she had found help. Her therapist had told her again and again that she couldn’t make Juno get better. That he would only heal once he was willing to help himself, and she couldn’t blame herself. And she was finally starting to believe it. 

It wasn’t even because she truly agreed with Dr. Malik. It was more that she was so, so tired. It was like trying to turn an old-earth ocean into freshwater by pouring buckets into it. Guilt gnawed at her, but she couldn’t face spending the years ahead of her trying to pick him up. There were things she could control, and things she couldn’t, and things that would just hurt her if she kept trying. 

By the time Dark Matters called her back, it had been a few months since she’d spoken to him. Maybe it was rude, but she didn’t want to face him again before leaving, didn’t want to tell him that she couldn’t do this anymore. Maybe one day he would get better, but Sasha couldn’t wait for him until he finally did.

She didn’t pack much. She would be wearing her Dark Matters uniform most of the time, anyway. Some extra clothes, pajamas, toothbrush and deodorant. She transferred all the pictures she wanted to keep to the new comms Dark Matters had given her, deleted the rest off her old comms, and left it at a thrift shop. She cut her hair short, like the agent who had interviewed her. She hugged her dads goodbye, took a taxi to the nearest spaceport, and boarded a shuttle. She would miss Mars-- miss the Hyperion skyline, her favorite coffee shop, her family. But as she watched it recede behind her, carrying only a small rolling suitcase, she felt lighter than she had in years.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! you can find me on tumblr @miraline-tpp!


End file.
